


we'll never be royal

by monkkeyslut



Category: Anastasia (1997), Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkkeyslut/pseuds/monkkeyslut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She'd always wanted to be free and now, in his own spectacular way, Gendry is selling her freedom for ten million pounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'll never be royal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecivilunrest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecivilunrest/gifts).



> Written for Dicey and based off the gifset on tumblr comparing Arya and Gendry to Dimitri and Anya/Anastasia. It's mostly the same plot as the movie, though there are some bits and pieces that aren't the same. Probably OOC, but that's what Dicey gets for making me write them.

Gendry remembers everything about the lost princess. She was smaller than the other girls her age and she spoke back to the women and men of the court, and most importantly, Gendry remembers, she wanted to be free. Always sneaking out to play in the snow, or holding her hand out of open windows when it rained or racing through the country side with her brothers. She bugged _him_ day in and day out to leave the forge and play with her, but Gendry knew then as he knows now that royalty and peasants don’t mix. Hell, he saw the way her eldest brother Jon was treated by her mother.

Gendry wondered not long after the rebellion, after the coup d’état, after she was listed among the dead, if she was free wherever she was.

He hoped.

* * *

 

Ten years later and he’s working in the underground business, foraging passports and official documents and auditioning girls to play the part of the lost girl, Princess Arya of House Stark.

There are some auditions that have Hot Pie bouncing in his seat, asking _can we go yet, she’s the one, that’s better than the last!_ But Gendry is particular about this bit of business, and it’ll take a lot to make him believe any of these girls could pass for his Arya.

(He takes to calling her his because his was the last face she saw before her sister pulled her along, because it was he who found blood in the snow near the train station, because it was he who never stopped looking in the crowd for a pair of familiar grey eyes and dark, curling hair. He takes to calling her his because she _is_ his, in his memory.)

So for Gendry, each audition is a bust, and for Hot Pie, each audition is another day he doesn’t get to see Lommy in Paris. Gendry couldn’t really give a damn about the French boy; Gendry is focused on the ten million pounds Sansa Stark is planning on handing to the people who bring her dead sister back to her.

With money like that, Gendry will never have to work for anyone ever again. He won’t be someone’s iron worker, won’t have to live under the thumb of people who think they’re bigger than him. He’ll be their equal then. Someone good enough for a princess, even. But there aren’t kings or queens in America, and that is where he plans to go when this whole charade is done. There are too many dark memories in England, too many ghosts in the walls of Winterfell.

(Gendry doesn’t get his hopes up, and it is just when he’s thinking of calling it quits that things start looking up.)

* * *

 

The girl is ratty and no taller than his shoulder, and Hot Pie thinks she’s a winner. (Gendry does too, but that’s not the point. The point is: she broke into the castle _they_ had broken into and wanted _them_ to do something for _her.)_

When he first spots her she’s moving across the great hall like a dancer, though this is so different. She’s graceful and quick, twisting and cutting with an imaginary sword. Her long braid flies out behind her each time she moves, and for a moment, Gendry is struck speechless. Then she pauses, one leg in the air, the other behind her, and her head snaps toward him so fast he’s surprised she didn’t break it.

“Can I help you?” She barks, voice rough. It sends a jolt down Gendry’s spine and he snaps into action, pounding down the steps toward her. Hot Pie isn’t too far behind, though he sounds a bit out of breath.

“Who the hell are you?” He asks, stopping right in front of her, lowering his face so she can get the full effect of his glare. Grey meet brown and Gendry is against struck by how familiar they are. Almost like—

“Nan,” she’s close to him, now. If they were in public, they’d be getting some pretty dark looks. “Are you Gendry?”

He straightens when she raises his chin and says his name. _Maybe she’s auditioning?_ He spares a glance at Hot Pie over his shoulder. The younger boy looks faintly ill from running so fast down the stairs, and beyond that Gendry catches a glance of the portrait of the Starks, ripped and stained in places, but still standing. Arya’s grey eyes stare back at him, almost challengingly—

He whips around in time to have her punch him in the face, her small fist knocking against his jaw with awful accuracy that leaves him spinning. She’s shouting at him, telling him it’s rude not to pay attention to people, but all he can see is ten million pounds and a dead girl.

* * *

 

She’s annoyingly sassy and awful when it comes to anything remotely _royal_ and when he asks her if she was born in a barn, Nan says, “Could have been, I suppose. Can’t remember anything past ten.”

And _that_ is interesting. Also, it’s helpful. They can make a completely knew past and life for this girl and nobody will be able to prove that she’s lying.

Gendry teaches her how to stand up straight and eat her food a little less rabidly and how to dance; Hot Pie focuses on teaching her the names of the royal family, the houses that were under her their rule, and the details of the night the Lannisters murdered the royal family.

“And the wolves were called Grey Wind, Ghost, Lady, Summer, Shaggydog and…and Nymeria, yeah?” She asks Hot Pie one night on the train. Gendry is half asleep when he hears this, and as he succumbs, he thinks, _we never told her that._

* * *

 

“You’re an idiot,” she says when she steps on his foot again. Gendry sighs and doesn’t meet her unnervingly familiar eyes, instead looks out across the field they’ve stopped to spend the night in. _Under the stars,_ says Nan, but Gendry thinks of it more like _we have no money for a room._ “Can’t you lead _properly?_ ”

“Can’t you bugger off?” He snaps, tugging her closer to him and keeping his gaze above her head. “Now, let’s begin again. You’ll need to get this down pat.”

They are silent for several minutes, only the sound of her annoyed grumbling and their footsteps across dying grass. Hot Pie snores softly in the distance, propped up against their bags. He’s beginning to day dream when she speaks again, softer this time. Warm breath puffs against his collarbone, and he curses himself for not buttoning his shirt. “You really believe I can do this?”

Gendry believe many things: he believes that one day he will be more than a gutter rat, he believes that Sansa Stark is a good judge of characters, he believes in working hard to get what you deserve, but mostly he believes in Arya Stark and the impossibility of her being alive, or being right here with him, and he also believes that Nan is so much like his Arya that Sansa Stark won’t know what hit her.

“Yes,” he says eventually. They are still in the twilight of the field, close enough that he can feel her chest brush his with every breath. She is twenty years old and looks no older than sixteen. That doesn’t stop him from leaning down, though, nor does it keep him from brushing his nose against hers.

_Highborn girls don’t fall for lowborn boys like me,_ he thinks suddenly. His eyes squeeze shut and he excuses himself from her presence, heading toward the treeline. _Not even dead girls._

* * *

 

He doesn’t know when he starts to think of Nan as Arya—maybe when she named Sansa’s friend Jeyne when going through the royal court, someone they hadn’t thought to teach her and someone who was long dead, or maybe it was when she asked him about his helm, the bull one, the one that Lannister men stole from him before knocking him out cold—either way, Gendry is certain this girl is the real thing, is _actually_ his Arya. His dead princess.

It makes arriving in Paris even worse; before, the thought of Sansa calling them frauds had been what kept him up at night. Now, it was the idea that Sansa might believe them, because then they’ll be on their way to America, just like they’d planned, and she will stay in Paris with her sister.

And that, in the end, is what seems to happen.

* * *

 

Sansa Stark is stunningly beautiful, all grown up as she is. Her husband, Willas Tyrell, seems wary when Lommy comes to him with news of the arrival of Princess Arya Stark. Gendry does not fault him for this; Sansa Stark is pregnant with her first child and bad news or false hopes might not be best for her health at the moment, but Lommy insists, and Gendry is adamant that they be allowed to bring the lost princess to her sister.

For a brief moment before her introduction, Gendry wants to take her away, run off with her and never look back. They can be happy someplace else, they can start new lives. She’ll be Arya and he’ll be Gendry and Hot Pie can come, too. Seeing the Tyrells and Sansa Stark here, all prim and proper—it’s not Arya. His memories of her all tell him the same thing: she wanted freedom. And when she lost her memory, when her family was killed, it seems like that was what she got.

And now, in his own spectacular way, Gendry is selling her freedom for ten million pounds.

There is no doubt when Arya walks into the room, dressed in a new dress Gendry had stolen for her, that she _is_ the lost princess. Sansa bursts into tears the moment her sister walks into the room, and Arya even looks a bit teary-eyed at the sight of her auburn haired sister. Gendry doesn’t know how much she remembers, if anything substantial at all, but the next day he is presented with ten million pounds by Willas Tyrell, so it must have been enough to convince Sansa fully.

* * *

 

The day he plans to leave is the day Arya comes to him for the first time since being reunited with her sister. “You’re just going to leave on me, then? No good-bye or anything?”

He’s at the train station when she catches him, while he waits for his train to arrive. He can hear the engine in the distance.

“Sansa told me you took the money.”

Gendry grimaces, giving her a look, “Sorry about that.”

Arya looks at him hard for a long moment, grey eyes filled with something he can’t understand. She’s all cleaned up now, but he rather thinks she looks prettier all dirty and dressed in pieces of clothes that don’t quite match. But what’s he know, right? With a sigh, Arya crosses her arms and turns to the tracks. “I understand; we were both gutter rats, weren’t we?”

_No,_ he thinks, then, _maybe._ She lived in an orphanage for ten years with hundreds of other kids. She probably knew more than him about the hardships of that kind of life. “That we were, milady.”

“ _Don’t_ call me that,” Arya snaps, shoving him. Gendry barely moves, “What, milday? That’s what you are now, right? Milady?”

Arya breathes heavily through her nose, and Gendry smiles, reaching over to tug on her braid. The smile slips off his face, and a stricken look crosses hers. “You’ll always be milady.”

“No,” she shakes her head, grabbing his hand where it still rests on the ends of her hair. “I’m—I’m Arya, I’m not some highborn—“

“You are.”

“I’m _not!”_

Gendry inhales, exhales. The train lifts their hair as it rushes past, brakes squealing. He needs to leave, but he doesn’t want to. She seems to realize this, as her grey eyes watch the train come to a stop beside them.

“Go,” Gendry murmurs, dropping his hand out from under hers. He smiles when she blinks up at him, annoyed and confused and hurt. “Go back to your family.”

“You’re my family, too,” Arya murmurs. “You saved me.”

Something painful starts in his chest. She remembered that, did she? Remember him opening the wall for her and her sister, remembers him pushing her through, despite her protests of him too.

“I’m just a boy who worked in the castle,” Gendry steps away, toward the train. The conductor calls for their tickets, and Gendry’s feels like a weight in his pocket. “And boys like me don’t…” He grits his teeth and starts to leave, shoulders taught. “Good-bye, Princess— _oof!”_

He stumbles forward when Arya’s weight hits him. She spins him around easily, hands tightening on the collar of his jacket, pulling him down to her height. Around them, people pause, watching.

Arya’s mouth lands on his with a firm _smack_. Their teeth clack together angrily, and she bites on his lip, and it’s altogether not very pleasant, but Gendry gets the idea and his hands settle on her hips. “Come with me,” he begs, when the whistle for the train trills again.

With a smirk, Arya holds up a hand in a wave—Gendry gazes back up to the street and watches the car pulls away, a flash of auburn in the backseat—

“That was the plan all along, idiot.”


End file.
